Eighty percent of ostensibly “active” files and folders have not been accessed for three to five years, resulting in unnecessary IT expenditures. Yet, most of the costs associated with unnecessary data hoarding are hidden.

Categorize
Transitory Data

The next
step is to categorize the transitory electronic data that is not currently on
records retention schedules. This involves different processes for different
types of data. File shares should be reviewed to determine the dates of last
use of the folders and files.

Physical data containers, such as drives, servers, tapes and
other media, are inventoried, and reasonable efforts made to determine their
source. If the data is required for business, regulatory or legal hold
purposes, it should be placed on retention schedules; if not, it can be
disposed of.

For maximum protection, an insured and experienced expert
should draft an opinion letterexplaining
the process and directing the final disposition of unneeded data. If there is
ever a challenge to the disposition of the data, the corporation can point to
this process and its associated documentation as evidence of their good-faith
effort to comply with its recordkeeping obligations.

Such
e-housecleaning efforts have a tremendous ROI. Some clients have been able to
take thousands of backup tapes off hold, and others have freed up significant
percentages of their available file share space—all
of this in addition to avoiding discovery and data breach costs.

It is important to be
aware of, and prepared for, the executive or business unit that insists on holding onto unused data, claiming
that they may someday need to access that data. The most
effective way of dealing with just-in-case
hoarders is to let the them keep their data, but
with the understanding that they are now in fact the "owner" of the
data with all the incidents of ownership.

That means they will be allocated all the costs of
ownership, including data storage, backup
and data breach
responsibility, and all legal costs associated with the review and production
of the data if it is ever swept into litigation discovery or governmental
investigations. Once they understand the full costs associated with owning the
data, executives or business units inevitably opt to dispose of unused and
unneeded data.

Anne Kershaw
in an
attorney and legacy data management consultant who has guided many corporations
through electronic records housecleaning efforts. She can be contacted at anne@akershaw.com.